Before I begin, this is not exactly a traditional control deck, there is a lot of combat in this deck. The creatures often come at instant speed and/or with enter the battlefield effects. The deck doesn't run any planeswalkers (at the moment) but there is room for them, the engine is the key, the Key to the City. In order to fully utilize the key, the early game involves the use of madness to keep the decks value and find your other cards. It's actually a decent play to have only two lands, key, and then discard a card to draw two the next turn and find that missing land that you needed. They key is a real engine, and it just gets better as the game goes on, enabling you to attack unblocked as well as turn unused two mana into an extra card per turn, and finally it always enables instant speed madness creatures to block as a good defensive tool. The key ties the deck together, its name is really fitting actually.
So as a control build, the deck can run quite a bit of cheap removal so long as you have a card to discard for the key, and the mana to tap to draw the extra card a turn. The question, is how do you support this build more. I've tried Chandra, Kalitas, Distended Mindbender in particular was very good for hand disruption alongside Harsh Scrutiny. Probably the hardest matchups I've had are versus planeswalkers, Nahiri's Wrath should completely resolve that matchup as they often come in multiples. The card advantage is only limited to being able to hold a card to discard by the end of your opponents turn.
How to support his core, well, I've considered a lot of cards, I've tried a lot of cards...
Probably my strongest four drop has been Distended Mindbender, being able to EOT turn 3 a guy into play, key to make him attack unblocked to kill a gideon planeswalker, and then emerge into play Mindbender to take my opponents hand apart has been incredibly overbearing to opponents on the other side of the table. Some of my considered cards have been based around that turn three madness play to make just that more consistent. Having an instant 4 power blocker that early, as well as a cheaper unblockable guy who deals real damage unblocked every turn is also what I've been doing with this list. For awhile I desperately tried to jam Chandra, but I didn't find her useful when I wanted to sometimes empty my hand and mana into the key. Brutality and Scrutiny played well with the hand disruption in the early game but overall didn't make nearly as much of a difference as mindbender due to their limitations and the variations of matchups that mindbender could influence. Noxious Gearhulk seemed at best a sideboard card against midrange, Lightning Axe was mainboard but got sided out versus the large amount of control decks, Essence Extraction is currently in my sideboard for aggro, but quickly loses value in the face of Gideon Emblems and Always watching. Incendiary Flow is too slow and doesn't catch enough recursive creatures. From Under the Floorboards has not been tried out yet, but I am wondering about its ability to finish a game as a 1 of with the madness cost. Gissa's Bidding sounds like it could be decent but not support the Mindbender Plan, and Twins of Maurer Estate look like good blockers with enough CMC to make emerge costs easy. Kozilek's Return seemed okay but didn't really get fired often enough.
I'm not really sure what I want in this deck currently, the core by itself works VERY well, which means a lot more power rather than synergy can be jammed into this list providing those cards are doing something just as good or better than what I am currently doing.
I was considering gearing it more towards a triage midrange deck with Abundant Maw, Alms of the Vein, and Incendiary Flow, allowing the deck to drain life and go for the throat with unblockably enabled creatures with Key and Skysovereign.
These are my thoughts, this is my deck, the lands and sideboard are untuned and I work like 60 hours a week so I can't really play it, but I really believe in it.
Try it.
Tell me what you think.
I have had extraordinary experiences with Ghirapur Orrery. I don't know to what extent that's a different deck than the one you have in mind here, but while trying to optimize Orrery I was thinking of a shell similar to yours, so I thought it was worth posting for consideration.
I've been unable to test much, but after a bit of discussion and a single FNM, the format seems a bit fast for what I was doing.
This is the new build, not sure how it'll play though, but I thought an update would be great, so here it goes.
This is more a burn deck now than it was before, it definitely needs tuning since it needed a drastic change.
In my limited testing it worked great against some decks, but if I never drew Key to the City I would do nothing for most of the game.
The trouble is having creatures to use the Key's unblockable ability, which makes me wonder if R/W or R/B/W would be better for the manlands alone to utilize the unblockable part of Key.
Certainly this deck needs more playing, but it definitely packs a wallop with the core cards.
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The red mage lives by the variance and dies by the variance. May the variance be with you, always.
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This is the core of the design
4 Bloodmad Vampire
4 Bloodhall Priest
4 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
4 Key to the City
4 Unlicensed Disintegration
4 Fiery Temper
3 Nahiri's Wrath
4 Transgress the Mind
4 Lost Legacy
So as a control build, the deck can run quite a bit of cheap removal so long as you have a card to discard for the key, and the mana to tap to draw the extra card a turn. The question, is how do you support this build more. I've tried Chandra, Kalitas, Distended Mindbender in particular was very good for hand disruption alongside Harsh Scrutiny. Probably the hardest matchups I've had are versus planeswalkers, Nahiri's Wrath should completely resolve that matchup as they often come in multiples. The card advantage is only limited to being able to hold a card to discard by the end of your opponents turn.
How to support his core, well, I've considered a lot of cards, I've tried a lot of cards...
Probably my strongest four drop has been Distended Mindbender, being able to EOT turn 3 a guy into play, key to make him attack unblocked to kill a gideon planeswalker, and then emerge into play Mindbender to take my opponents hand apart has been incredibly overbearing to opponents on the other side of the table. Some of my considered cards have been based around that turn three madness play to make just that more consistent. Having an instant 4 power blocker that early, as well as a cheaper unblockable guy who deals real damage unblocked every turn is also what I've been doing with this list. For awhile I desperately tried to jam Chandra, but I didn't find her useful when I wanted to sometimes empty my hand and mana into the key. Brutality and Scrutiny played well with the hand disruption in the early game but overall didn't make nearly as much of a difference as mindbender due to their limitations and the variations of matchups that mindbender could influence. Noxious Gearhulk seemed at best a sideboard card against midrange, Lightning Axe was mainboard but got sided out versus the large amount of control decks, Essence Extraction is currently in my sideboard for aggro, but quickly loses value in the face of Gideon Emblems and Always watching. Incendiary Flow is too slow and doesn't catch enough recursive creatures. From Under the Floorboards has not been tried out yet, but I am wondering about its ability to finish a game as a 1 of with the madness cost. Gissa's Bidding sounds like it could be decent but not support the Mindbender Plan, and Twins of Maurer Estate look like good blockers with enough CMC to make emerge costs easy. Kozilek's Return seemed okay but didn't really get fired often enough.
I'm not really sure what I want in this deck currently, the core by itself works VERY well, which means a lot more power rather than synergy can be jammed into this list providing those cards are doing something just as good or better than what I am currently doing.
I was considering gearing it more towards a triage midrange deck with Abundant Maw, Alms of the Vein, and Incendiary Flow, allowing the deck to drain life and go for the throat with unblockably enabled creatures with Key and Skysovereign.
These are my thoughts, this is my deck, the lands and sideboard are untuned and I work like 60 hours a week so I can't really play it, but I really believe in it.
Try it.
Tell me what you think.
This is the new build, not sure how it'll play though, but I thought an update would be great, so here it goes.
4 Bloodhall Priest
4 Bedlam Reveler
Spells (24)
4 Cathartic Reunion
4 Fiery Temper
4 Alms of the Vein
4 Unlicensed Disintegration
4 Incendiary Flow
4 Avacyn's Judgment
4 Key to the City
2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
Lands
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Geier Reach Sanitarium
4 Smoldering Marsh
1 Cinder Barrens
12 Mountain
This is more a burn deck now than it was before, it definitely needs tuning since it needed a drastic change.
In my limited testing it worked great against some decks, but if I never drew Key to the City I would do nothing for most of the game.
The trouble is having creatures to use the Key's unblockable ability, which makes me wonder if R/W or R/B/W would be better for the manlands alone to utilize the unblockable part of Key.
Certainly this deck needs more playing, but it definitely packs a wallop with the core cards.